Andrew knew he was beautiful. The stag made a habit of reminding himself of this every time he passed a mirror or reflective surface, admiring the varnished sheen of his golden-brown fur in windows and polished car hoods. He kept it in such condition by showering three times a day, four if Andrew felt like he had dirtied himself between brushing his teeth and putting on his pajamas.

It took time to get clean—running his hooves over the the thin coat, allowing the high-pressure shower head to rake its hot fingers through his fur. After showering, the stag could never resist spending a few dripping minutes in front of the mirror, examining the soaking inches of his body for imperfections. Andrew's heart would race as he roamed the geography of himself—the soft hills of his abs that led to the suggestive ravines of his thighs, the plateaus of his shoulders sloping towards his mountainous neck, hiking up to his slender, overhanging muzzle. The stag thought his frame had a nice geometry to it, like a painting that lead the eye to all the right places. And if he was a painting, then the antlers on Andrew's head were the subject.

They sprouted gloriously from his skull, dark and austere, curving like the elegant neck of a swan. Their magnificence was undeniable. But these were not the reasons that Andrew loved his antlers. He loved them because they were symmetrical.

Every spring, they would loosen and fall off at the same time, and by the end of autumn, they would be reborn, precisely similar to one another. Like twins. He liked to think of them as sculptures, and wore them proudly. The young stag obsessed over his horns, lolling his head about under their even weight, shivering at the thought of the atoms that built the wonders on his head.

On the walls of his apartment, he had mounted his own antlers from seasons past—reminders of the perfections that he had produced time and time again.

Andrew's worship of his antlers began in sixth grade, when most of the bucks his age were beginning to feel lumps on their heads. Some grew quicker than others, their nubs giving them authority over playground law—what game was to be played at recess, and who got to be captain of the teams during these games. The early bloomers held onto their power until the rest of their peers caught up, unafraid to challenge them for control over the school yard.

Fights broke out.

Even though it was strictly against the rules for any mammals to use horned body parts (a policy the school installed after a fawn had his eye put out in a roughhousing session), the boys were eager to smash into one another, crashing bone against bone. Back then, Andrew didn't mind that he was a late bloomer. Those without combat-ready antlers were silently shunned from the skirmishes, which he was O.K. with. The violence in which his classmates threw themselves at each other unnerved him, the harsh clashing of antlers making him flinch. It sounded like a pile of wood being tossed on the ground.

Eventually, it was his turn. It happened over the course of the last two weeks of spring, when he was finishing a draft of his first five-page paper. Inch by aching inch, the velvety nubs on his head thickened and matured, losing their softness. At first, he paid no attention to the way his antlers formed. He was sure that they would branch off in wild directions, just like everyone else's had.

They didn't.

Each curve and prong on his antlers mirrored the other one perfectly. He would spend half an hour in the bathroom looking to see if one of them had some tiny flaw that he had missed. And as they continued to grow, something else grew inside the young buck.

An overwhelming desire for perfection settled into his being. Nobody had told him that his antlers were special or unique in their sameness, and only he noticed the beauty of it. He started to arrange things side by side in his room, a change his mother noticed but did not comment on. Andrew wanted terribly to mimic these things that were already a part of him, to protect them, and to ensure their safety. He became cautious and timid, making sure not to scrape them against door frames and other furniture. When one of Andrew's classmates challenged him to butt heads, he was suddenly overcome with horrible images of his antlers shattering into a million imperfect pieces, and ran crying to the yard duty.

From there, Andrew's obsession only grew stronger. He wept the first year when his antlers fell off—he thought they would never grow back the same. The young buck mourned the death of his beauty, keeping the bones under his bed when his father told him to throw them in the dumpster. Cherishing them gave him the only hope that they would grow anew, just the same as before.

And they did.

While the design was different, the identical nature stayed the same. He thought that he had somehow cultivated this perfection, that he learned to harness some mystery of life. It bred an idea of power inside him that eventually became the foundation for an extreme narcissism. The night he discovered his antlers growing back, Andrew dreamt of being bisected by a giant kitchen knife, smiling as it cut him in half.

Andrew decided to treat himself on Valentine's day. He planned to take himself out to the salad bar next to the offices where he worked. But first he had to get through work. The thought of going to the offices dampened his mood. Buckley would be there. He hated Buckley. The old wolf always chomped his yellow teeth at him and called him "doe" in front of the senior members, then would hang a sweaty arm around and laugh like he didn't mean it.

Andrew contemplated ways that he could avoid Buckley on his way to the metro station, avoiding stepping in puddles from yesterday's rainstorm. The stag did, however, take the opportunity to gaze at himself in those puddles, watching as his image would dance between them.

His hooves clopped purposefully against the sidewalk until he came to the metro station, swiping his pass over the small gate and making his way upstairs to the platform. With fifteen minutes until the next train, Andrew stood silently and judged those around him.

Crouching by a bench, Andrew saw a black wolf that looked startlingly like Buckley, but he soon realized that he was homeless. A raggedy jacket and jeans clung to his fat form. The predator was scratching his belly, yawing in the early hours of the morning. Ugly mouth, thought Andrew, just like Buckley. An antelope standing near the wolf took a few nervous steps away. Her earrings wobbled, glinting in the morning sun. They weren't pierced evenly, and Andrew took satisfaction in knowing that if he ever got his ears pierced, he would do them better than the woman in front of him.

As more people arrived, Andrew sank deeper into himself, reducing the other commuters to nothing more than dirt beneath his hooves.

Eyes too far apart for a tiger, cowlicks on the back of your head, dry paws, stop scratching yourself in public you heathen, saggy jeans are not a good look for you, sir.

Once each and every flaw had been pointed out, Andrew relaxed back into his smugness. He had proven himself superior, so if anyone decided to try and bring him down, Andrew knew that he could rip them apart. The stag thought he held their destruction lightly on his tongue.

Of course, Andrew knew that he had to keep these comments to himself. At home, he could marinate in his love for himself—the love he deserved—but in public, the young stag struggled to reign in these feelings. To say "thank you" instead of "I know" when Leslie at the front desk complimented his suit because he knew the brown bear liked him, even though he never returned the affection. Her lazy eye made his stomach curdle. A wide grin for Buckley when he latched that sweaty, stinking arm around him because to Buckley, that terrible odor and physical contact meant that he was "one of the guys." Only when he was home would Andrew allow himself to scream and rant about these ugly people and their ugly ways.

Metal screeched as the train barreled into the station, the sound cutting harshly into the quiet morning. For most it was the final alarm clock to wake up. The doors whooshed open, and Andrew made sure that he was the last person on so that he was closest to the exit. Trains were filthy, and he didn't enjoy being so close to those he had deemed flawed and imperfect.

The commute took fifteen minutes, and when the doors opened to let him out, Andrew suddenly found himself sprawled in a puddle of filthy rainwater. For a few shocked moments, he held himself above the grimy puddle, wondering how he had fallen. It had been so quick, and it came without warning.

"My purse!" yelled a voice from behind him, "He's got my purse! My purse!"

Craning his neck around, Andrew saw a lioness pointing down the street. The black wolf from earlier was sprinting away, cradling his theft in his paws. He moved like an aggressive shadow, bustling through mammals on his way to the exit. The woman behind Andrew continued to yell, but quickly broke down into puttering sobs.

"My purse…m-my purse," she whimpered pathetically, and the pieces of his puzzle clicked together.

Bulldozed from behind by a filthy predator. Scowling in fury, Andrew pounded a hoof into the puddle, water splashing into his face. As the lioness blubbered behind him, Andrew looked madly into the puddle at his own reflection, staring hard at the young buck in the grimy water. A drop rolled to the tip of his nose, wobbled, then fell in, shattering the angry reflection. In an instant, he recoiled from the puddle, as if it had begun to boil.

Stumbling backwards, he swiped his hooves feverishly over the filth, but it had already soaked through the perfect blueness of his suit. Swampy patches of ugliness formed on his chest and knees, and he shuddered when the coldness violated his fur.

A paw landed on his shoulder, retracting when Andrew whipped around. It was an old kangaroo who seemed frightened by the anger that played over the stag's face. The old roo had crusted eyes and too many wrinkles. He seemed to choke down what he was going to say.

"Don't," Andrew said, not waiting for the kangaroo's reaction before fleeing through the station. His tail jerked behind him, agitated.

He walked fast, hooves clacking against the cement A hot core of rage burned in his chest, and he kept his head down as he hurried to work. The young stag endured a half mile of shame before reaching the office. Blood coated the inside of his mouth. He had bitten his lip too hard. Quickly checking his reflection, he noticed the red spot on his gnawed lip. Swearing bitterly, he yanked open the door, clopping past Leslie. She looked up from the desk, her lazy eye swinging wildly under her furrowed brow.

"Andrew? Oh my god, what happened to you?"

That lazy eye repulsed him, the way it angled away, not giving him the attention he deserved. A vile thing bubbled inside him, and he clamped down on it before it erupted.

"I fell," he said, and made a beeline for the bathrooms.

He was lucky to find himself alone. Cranking the tap, he shoved his hooves under the running water. The stag took the time to breathe. He could come back from this. Just wash up, get back out there, and finish—

His thought was interrupted when his right hoof snagged on his fur. Wrenching it to his face, Andrew felt his stomach drop as he spotted a large chip running along the edge. Unbelieving seconds passed. Something inside Andrew crumbled, and he dropped his head above the sink. The suit, he could handle—a blow that he could take. But losing a physical piece of himself? That hurt. His heart beat like a wardrum in his chest, and despair oozed grossly over his insides.

How was he supposed to celebrate Valentine's day with an imperfection? He couldn't go out in public like this. Andrew would sooner be caught dead. A horrible stench entered the bathroom. Buckley.

Andrew shrunk away from the sink, but it was too late. The fat wolf burped, then greeted him.

"Doe! My God, what happened to you? You look like shit," he said, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

Andrew simmered.

Buckley took the silence poorly. He scooted over to the stag, prepared to toss an arm over his shoulder. Andrew jolted back, hooves sliding over the tiled floor. The vile thing rose in him again, and he didn't bother trying to keep it down.

"Fuck you, Buckley. Don't touch me," he spat.

The wolf recoiled, his eyebrows knitting with anger.

"Fuck me? The fuck is wrong with you, doe?" he shot back, poking a claw into the stag's chest.

"Don't fucking touch me, chomper."

The words exploded into the air, hanging between the two. Buckley's yellow teeth flashed from under his gums. With a quickness that Andrew never expected from the fat wolf, Buckley wrenched him close by the neck of his shirt. The stench was almost unbearable. He smelled like mayonnaise and rotten fish.

"I'll give you five seconds to take that back, doe. Otherwise, I'm knocking your teeth in."

Andrew rammed his chipped hoof into the wolf's jaw. It wasn't a strong punch, only enough to make Buckley stumble back in shock. A small trickle of blood seeped from his lips. Growling, the wolf advanced on Andrew, socking him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of the stag.

Andrew had never been punched before. It hurt a lot more than he thought it would. It was like he could still feel Buckley's fist digging into him, even after he had withdrawn. The wolf wheeled back, sending a right hook rocketing across Andrew's muzzle. The stag sailed backwards, his hooves scrambling to find grip on the slippery floor. His arm flailed to find the sink, but failed to grasp anything.

His head cracked against the floor. Something snapped. He saw stars. Buckley's snarl flatlined.

"Oh shit," he said, leaning over the dazed stag.

It took Andrew a minute to regain himself. When he did, he rolled onto his side and vomited. Some of it dribbled out of his nose, the putrid stench imprinting itself in his nostrils. He was able to push himself up slowly after that. The wolf's anger resumed once Andrew got back on his hooves. He didn't touch him, but pointed aggressively.

"You tell anyone about this, and we both get fired. I would suggest going home, doe," he said, and stormed out of the bathroom.

Andrew ran the sink again, spitting until he felt like most of the vomit had cleared from his mouth. A lancing pain raced through his head, making him wince. Looking up, he saw that one of the branches of his antlers had broken off, leaving a red, gory circle where it used to be.

The stag sank to his knees, his destruction complete.